Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Today, as I was driving to a local high school to inquire about using their theater for our still-homeless production, I happened upon a bunch of students staging a walk-out. I have been so inspired to see how many people are taking to the streets to protest HR 4437, which would make it a felony to enter the US without authorization. The images of half a million people flooding downtown LA on Saturday thrilled me. I remember how moving and overwhelming it was to be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people marching for peace in DC last fall. There is great power in numbers. In 1966, Martin Luther King, Jr. said "I'm still convinced there's nothing more powerful to dramatize a social evil than the tramp tramp of marching people." How heartening to see this happening in my community now, and to see young people leading the way.

2 comments:

Great photo, thanks for posting this. I remember that the day after 187 passed, the only thing that made the day survivable for me was that students at Mission High in San Francisco walked out of school and up the street in front of my office, chanting.

Thanks, landismom! I wish I could take credit for the photo, but I found it online on the local newspaper's website.

It is so exciting to see students take action, isn't it?! I'm getting ready to go teach a Family Voices workshop at a local high school this morning; I look forward to discussing the current issues with the kids...

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About Me

I am the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications), and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, Self Storage (Ballantine)and Delta Girls (Ballantine), along with my first novel for young readers, My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt). You can visit my website at www.gaylebrandeis.com or email me at gaylebrandeis at gmail.com. I am on the national staff of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and am a founding member of the Women Creating Peace Collective. I live in Riverside, CA, where I am currently serving a two year term as Inlandia Literary Laureate, and am mom to two adult kids and a toddler.